The Flash
by ThisIsTheGreatestUsername
Summary: Fastest player in all of Aincrad. Second-in-command of the Knights of the Blood. Commander of countless of Floor Raids. Partner of the Black Swordsman. Survivor of SAO. She was determined, intelligent, ruthless, and strong. She was the Flash. No other introduction needed. Legends, however, are not built over night.


**Senko: Part I**

**December 17****th****, 2022 – Rovia, 4****th**** Floor**

The gondola docked by the private pier and the three passengers stepped onto the wooden walkway. After receiving his payment, the gondolier—a weathered, old man—tipped his sun-battered straw hat towards the small party and then poled his boat off and onto the waterway.

The two guards on duty by a small side gate of a walled estate made a show of challenging the newly arrived trio but was quickly silenced by a raised hand from seemingly the leader of the group.

"We have business with the Countess," she said. She was young, perhaps too young to be taken seriously, but she spoke with such certainty and confidence that you could help but do otherwise. Her long, chestnut hair was tied in a braid and hung loosely over one shoulder. A plain silver hilt poked cheekily from her belt, her free hand resting nonchalantly on top of it.

The guards look at each other, then shrugged. One of them took his keys and had the gate unlocked within a minute.

The girl and her two companions walked past them without so much as a glance. Only belatedly did she add, "Thanks."

A stone staircase brought them up onto a massive garden filled with finely trimmed flora and statuaries commissioned from generations passed. As they walked along the pavement leading to the main estate, the sounds of water splashing in fountains and birds singing in hedges filled their ears.

"Can't wait till the Countess starts screeching that we're late," said the first companion, who was also female. She had straight, dark hair and wonderfully green eyes. A pair of daggers hung by her sides, but you would be foolish to think that they were her only pair.

"The Countess doesn't like to be kept waiting," said the second companion, scratching his ginger beard. He was tall and broadly built, filling out much of the heavy maille armour he wore. A meter-long great shield laid strapped to his back and a scabbarded bastard sword hung on his left hip.

"She's a fuckin' NPC! She can wait for all the fucks I care," the dark-haired girl cried exasperatedly.

"A girl shouldn't be speaking like that, Koharu," the man reprimanded.

"A girl shouldn't be listening to old men who still plays video-games," she shot back.

The man blushed slightly. "I'm only thirty-five."

"Oh really?" Koharu made a mocking expression. "Life has surely treated you harsh, hasn't it, Godfree?" For someone only the age of thirteen, anything older than thirty was classed as middle-aged.

The man opened his mouth to respond, but just then their leader spun on them suddenly. A look from those sharp, hazel eyes caused both of them to cast down their gaze, finding new interests in the pavement design.

There was a long moment before finally she let out a sigh.

"Like cats and dogs, you two are. Can't go anywhere without some sort of argument," she said.

"Sorry, Asuna," they murmured their apologies.

She waved them off to show that it was no biggie. "Whatever, I just didn't want my eardrums bursting before talking with the Countess, as opposed to after."

"Oh, if you think the last conversation with her was bad, wait till you get a load of this," Koharu said with a smirk. "Drove some people to actually jump out the windows back in the beta. There's a reason why she's written as 'The Cuntess' in the beginner's handbook."

At that title, the ginger-haired man seemed mollified. Asuna could not tell whether the man's expression was genuine or not, though their brief time partying together seem to suggest the former.

With a gesture, they continued their way. As they approach closer to the estate building, they encountered more posting of guards. These guards wore ridiculously plumed helmets and liveries holding the colour of their benefactor: blue with yellow trimmings. More ceremonial than actual guards, the trio were let through without much trouble, if only by the confidence in their strides. The building itself was four stories high, lined with a colonnaded front and an open balcony hanging above the front doors, exquisitely carved arches rounding the roof; a bona fide palazzo.

"Now which window will I be jumping out from?" Koharu mused as she examined the rows of large, room-sized windows.

The wide double doors were opened before them and they entered without slowing a beat. Making a show of impatience, Asuna asked a busy servant for directions and was immediately catered to.

As they walked through a long hallway, she asked Koharu, "Anything else we should know from the beta?"

The former beta-tester paused for a moment to think, then shook her head. "Nope, we go in, get screamed at for fifteen minutes, then actually speak civilly for a good ten seconds before getting yelled at again for another ten more minutes, before then _finally_ completing the quest. God, no wonder her subjects end up assassinating her. I would kill her myself if she didn't have McBane next to her."

"They're just words from a sad and lonely lady. Sticks and stones," said Godfree.

Koharu barked a laugh at that. "You stand ahead of us then if you think you can take on that much obnoxiousness."

"Don't worry, I will."

"What happens later?" Asuna asked.

"Well, after she's killed, a succession crisis happens since she has no direct heir because, let's face it, nobody wants to marry that bitch, not for all the money in the world," Koharu explained. "And we get put into a dungeon on suspicion of assassination, only to be freed and recruited into a faction that seeks to install the 'rightful' heir. We can choose to go along or betray them. But, to be honest, to me it doesn't really matter who is really the rightful one because I get paid and they're both miles likeable than the cunt."

The hallway ended and it brought them to a rather large sitting room with the outer doors of the Countess' audience chamber facing them. There were no guards here except for one man, or should it be said, _the _man. He was huge, even bigger than Godfree, with greying hair and tattooed, muscular arms emerging from the heavy sleeves of his brigandine. His hair and beard were dyed red with henna, and he had no visible weapons on him except for his bare hands.

"Captain McBane," Asuna began, "We've done what the Countess asked for and wish to see her."

McBane's deep-sea blue eyes regarded her closely, and it took a slight will of effort to keep herself from flinching.

Finally, he said, "I'll inform her."

He disappeared within the doors and it was like a heavy weight being lifted off them.

"Fucking hell, every time I see him, I just about piss myself," said Koharu.

Godfree made a face, as if he was trying to expel that unholy image from his mind. "I heard he's the highest levelled NPC in the first ten floors."

Koharu nodded. "He's easily equivalent to a field boss. You get to see him in action later on the quest line and, trust me, you don't want to be anywhere near him."

McBane returned and ushered them inside, and they moved through a short corridor before coming before another set of doors. Usually, when meeting members of nobility it was here where players would be forced to give up their weapons to a guard or servant, but there was no such thing when meeting the Countess. Not that anyone would even think of drawing their weapon in the presence of McBane's watchful eyes, which never seemed to blink.

With a thick hand, McBane opened the inner door.

Inside was a spacious apartment adorned with multiple plush sofa chairs, a map-strewn table, an unlit hearth, vases and porcelains, and enough shelves of books to outfit a mini library. On the far end, sunlight poured in from the uncurtained window wall.

The Countess of Rovia sat facing slightly away from them on a large, fluffy chair, feet propped up on an equally fluffy stool. She had a freckled, cherubic face that was a little rosy on the cheeks, and her red hair was bound in a braid so long that it coiled round her lap like a sleeping snake. About sixteen, Asuna would have guessed her age.

At the sound of the door closing, she finally turned to face her guests, lifting a steaming cup from a side table.

She hurled the cup at them and only Koharu's earlier warning that something like this would happen allowed Asuna to duck in time. The fine porcelain crashed against the door, shattering instantly and spilling hot liquid onto the party.

"You all are LATE!" the Countess screamed, her eyebrows creasing such that the youthful face appeared more hag-like. "Of all the _useless, idiotic, imbecilitic—_"

"Imbecilitic? Is that even a word?" Godfree murmured.

"—dim-witted, birdbrained bunch of fools which has ever come into my service," the Countess continued, "You all have got to be one of the worst. Seriously, just looking at you lot of lack-wits is already hurting my head."

McBane took up position by her seat. If the incessant screeching hurt his eardrums, he did not show it.

"I sent you all out with one task. ONE TASK. And it took you all this long to accomplish it?" Her voice was hysteric and seemed to stretch her vocal cords to the barest limits.

"Your grace, we did what you wanted as quickly as we could," Asuna replied, doing her absolute best not to cringe.

"It's not even past noon yet," added Koharu. They had started the quest only an hour before.

The Countess gave Koharu a look of pure disgust. "Are you spastic?"

"No, what—"

"Daft? Senseless?"

"What—"

"Just simply feebleminded then?" She turned to McBane. "McBane, go play fetch with this cretinous creature later, will you?"

The captain inclined his head but said nothing else.

Asuna could hear the gritting of Koharu's teeth. "I'm so killing the voice actress for this bitch when we get out of here," Koharu muttered under her breath.

"You!" The Countess pointed at Godfree, who gulped. "Forgive me, you all took so long to return to me that I forgot what kind of orc you are."

"I-I'm a…human?"

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm not aware that humans have subspecies that speaks from their arse rather than their mouth."

Beads of sweat seemed to form on the Godfree's forehead. The man opened his mouth to respond, but then seemed to think better otherwise. It was the right choice, in Asuna's opinion.

Giving up on him, the Countess then turned her attention to Asuna. "You look like the only with some shred of intelligence, so I'll ask you in simple language: Do you have my medicine?"

Asuna nodded and fished for the quest item in her pouch.

Even that brief delay seemed too much for the Countess as she jumped up from her seat, marching forward. "By the Ruby Palace! How long do you intend on keeping me WAITING?" she screamed the last word into Asuna's face, spit flying and hitting.

"I swear I will have my dogs mount on your corpse if you don't give it to me in—"

Asuna finally found the two vials and quickly held them out before her.

The Countess snatched them and held them up to better examined them in the light. A moment later, she huffed, seemingly satisfied (for the time being), and returned to her seat.

"Did the wizard say anything else about it?" she asked.

"Only that mixing it with tea should help with the taste," replied Asuna.

The Countess nodded, then moved to add the medicine to her cup before she realized that she had thrown it away earlier. "Look at what you asinines made me do," she said, and then called for a servant.

A portly, but well-dressed man appeared through a side door which Asuna hadn't noticed before, and the Countess ordered another teapot brewed. He returned within a minute and set a new cup and pot on the table, while the Countess sat tapping impatiently on her chair's arm; it was as though they had already prepared one beforehand.

Asuna watched as the Countess poured one vial of medicine into the cup, stirring the contents haphazardly before waiting for it to cool. What exactly the medicine was for, or why the Countess commissioned a wizard to make it, she had no idea, but the one thing she did know was that…

…it was poison.

Of course, none of them would have known that if not for Koharu's beta-tester background. The dark-haired rogue was now grinning, probably counting down the seconds till the infuriating lady drops dead. In all honesty, Asuna herself was glad that she didn't need to listen to any more of the Countess' shit.

The Countess lifted the cup off the saucer to her lips. But as she began to tip it into her mouth, she seemed to notice something and stared at the players.

"What the hell are you all still doing here?" she asked. "Get out."

"What about our reward?" asked Godfree.

Her eyebrows furrowed angrily. "After keeping me waiting this long? You lot are lucky that I'm even letting you leave alive." But she looked to McBane. "Give them something for their troubles. Must have taken all their combined wits to figure their left arse cheek from their right."

The captain tossed them a bag of coins, which Koharu snatched deftly out of the air. She nodded to them after counting the amount, and they began shuffling out the door.

Koharu gave the Countess one last look, a wide grin on her face. "Be careful of poison," she said out loud.

Despite this being Asuna's first MMO, she knew that the Artificial Intelligence in SAO had vastly surpassed its predecessors. Unlike in many other games, the NPCs of SAO were not confined to predetermined scripts that made interactions robotic and rigid, and instead was developed to the point where it could read and respond to players' actions so realistically that it was easy to forget at times that it was not an actual human talking. Leaked stories of voice actors and actresses being made to record hundreds, if not thousands, of lines of vocabulary had crawled its way onto the game's pre-released forums—from what Asuna had heard.

Nevertheless, there were still certain boundaries which the NPCs had to stay within in order to prevent them from going off-course from their intended roles. For example, a NPC farmer would still graciously thank and reward you for defending his herds of sheep from ravenous wolves, even if in the process of doing so you had accidentally burned down his farm, sacrificed his only child for wolf-bait, and killed his sheep anyway for mutton.

Thus, it was to no worry—and all manner of smugness—which Koharu had made her last comment, expecting merely a bemused expression from the NPCs at best.

"Poison!" the Countess cried out and threw her cup away like it was hot metal.

Koharu's eyes widened, her expression utterly confused. "Wait, this wasn't in the beta—"

In a split second, Asuna saw McBane dart across the room in a way no man that big should be able to move. He grabbed her by the arm, twisted it behind her back, driving her to the ground, all in one movement. She cried out in pain and Godfree moved to help but was instantly caught in the chin with a vicious wheel kick. He dropped to the floor wordlessly. Koharu drew her daggers in panic and yelped as McBane flung Asuna at her. The two players crashed helplessly into the ground, limbs sprawling.

Before she had the chance to get up, Asuna felt herself being lifted by her tunic. The deep-sea blue eyes of the captain met hers and she could not help but feel small and weak, knowing now first-hand why the beginner's handbook had warned—with capslocks—to avoid pissing this man off AT ALL COSTS. In McBane's other hand was a struggling Koharu. Godfree laid on the floor, McBane's foot pressing on his chest like a heavy weight, his dazed expression showing that he'd yet to recover from that reverse roundhouse.

"Now what's this about poison?" the Countess asked, surprisingly calm, having watched all that without raising so much as a finger.

McBane threw them to their knees before the lady.

Asuna looked at Koharu.

"I've no idea what's going on, Asuna," she said, panic evident in her voice. "This wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to drink it."

"Well, that's not happening, is it?"Asuna snapped a bit too harshly.

Koharu shook her head. "I don't know. I just don't know what's going on."

"Okay, let's just calm ourselves," Asuna said, then forced herself to think. "What I'm guessing is that we somehow triggered a hidden option in the quest. Is that possible?"

It took several moments before Koharu responded, "It's possible. It never happened in the beta, but things have changed since."

Godfree groaned, still under McBane's foot. "I think I have to wear one of those full helms from now on."

"Shut it, Godfree. We're thinking here on how to get our asses saved," hushed Koharu. Her sharp rebuke was a sign that she was getting her nerves under control.

"Are one of you simpletons going to answer me, or should I just have McBane execute you now?" the Countess asked, her expression growing more impatient by the split-second.

Aware of the presence of the captain behind her, Asuna dared not glance back. "What my fellow adventurer meant by 'poison'," she tried explaining, "is that your Grace should be careful of drinking any potions without the necessary precautions."

"The wizard Clavicus have served my family's court and this city for over twelve years," said the Countess. "What reason does he have to poison me?"

"Just being in your presence comes to mind," whispered Koharu under her breath. Asuna shot her a dark look.

"Maybe he's not, your Grace. We were just raising the possibility. Better cautious than not," Asuna said.

The Countess' eyes flared with anger. "Don't tell me what to do!" she snapped, then jumped up from her seat and jabbed a finger into Asuna's face. "Not only did you accuse a faithful servant of mine, but you also caused me to drop my medicine!" She gestured at the scattered pieces of her broken china laying in a small pool of spilt tea. The second vial was still safely intact on the table, however.

"That was not our intention," apologized the chestnut-haired player.

"I don't give a flying dogshit about what you arse dandruffs intended. You've wasted my time, and I'm not going to stand for you wasting any more of it. McBane, take them outside and break some bones, then get them off my property. If there are no gondolas, just toss them into canal!"

Koharu's eyes widened, as she protested, "Wait, no!"

"Cut off the tongue of that one too while you're at it. I didn't know that idiocy could be infectious until I met her."

Asuna's heart sank as she braced herself for McBane to manhandle her, her mind racing to think of something—anything—to salvage the situation; nothing came up.

But after several moments, when the rough grip and dragging did not come as expected, she gingerly looked behind her to find the brute of a captain still standing in his place unmoved. Like a mountain, in armour.

"What are you waiting for?" the Countess all but screeched.

McBane took his foot off Godfree and went down on one knee. "Your Grace, I agree with the adventurers. Never hurts to care for poison."

"Why poison me though? What reasons does Clavicus have?" she pressed.

Godfree rolled onto his four limbs to Asuna's left, rubbing his chin sorely. "Is she seriously asking that?" he whispered.

"Wizards don't serve any masters but themselves," said McBane with the slightest hint of a growl. "Wouldn't surprise me if he sold himself to gain from your death."

"That's just your Northerner superstition of wizards speaking. I pay him almost a fortune each year to keep him in my retinue. Not to mention the freedom I give him to pursue his own projects." The Countess scowled but seemed to be actually considering the words of the captain of her guards. "But I supposed having someone taste my medicine wouldn't hurt. The dirt of my father's grave has yet to settle, but I doubt certain treasonous factions of my court would wait so quietly."

Realization slowly crept up onto Asuna as she figured that the situation had turned for the better. She let out a sigh of relie—

"You!" The Countess snapped her finger at Koharu. "Drink my medicine!"

Koharu gave her a look of utter confusion. "What?"

"Drink. My. Medicine," the young aristocrat spelled out as if she was a child.

The dark-haired rogue stared dumbly at the pool of spilt tea nearby. "How?"

A vein visibly popped out on the Countess' temple. "Figure it out yourself, lick it off the floor for all I care. I'm not wasting the last vial on you. Merciful Liberator, I didn't realize I have to teach a dog on how to drink."

"The fuck I will!" Koharu said indignantly.

"Calm down, Koharu," Godfree said.

She glared at him, her eyes burning with fury. "I'm not dying for this bitch," she seethed through her teeth.

The older, ginger-haired man shook his head. "No, you're not," he said, then raised his voice. "I'll drink it."

The Countess frowned but said nothing, only returning to her seat and tapping impatiently on the chair's arm.

Godfree moved to stand, but Asuna rested a hand on him to stop him. "No," she said, and stood up herself, meeting the Countess' glare with her own. "None of us are drinking that. You can get one of your own servants to do that."

The rage and malice came to the girl's expression as expected. "How _dare_ you speak to me like—"

Asuna cut her off, "You don't order us around. Our services ended the moment you paid us and we're not going to do any more just because you're throwing a stupid tantrum. Word of advice though, if you're going treat people like this, then don't be surprise when you find a knife in your heart one day. And if you still think otherwise, go ahead, push us around some more, and _see_ what happens."

The words had burst out of mouth before she knew it, but she realized that she did not regret any single one of them, even with McBane breathing on the back of her neck. There was only so much insults a person, however patient, could take before enough was enough. Her two companions stared gaping at her.

The Countess narrowed her eyes. "Is that a threat?"

"Take it how you will, your Grace," she said without any sort of deference.

"Your Cuntess," added Koharu, seemingly emboldened. Even Godfree didn't protest this time.

The Countess sat back, stunned into silence—a minor miracle of itself—and Asuna knew that her point had gotten across clearly. There comes a time when every spoiled child must simply just be told _no_.

"McBane, take them to the dungeon. NOW!"

* * *

**Author's Notes: **This fanfic will be a series of short stories of Asuna taking place after the First Floor boss raid up till she starts partying with Kirito. I always felt that Asuna as a character had lots of potential and would have liked to see more of her and how she gained her reputation as a player. So with that idea in mind I started writing this story.

One thing I would like to apologize for those of you unfamiliar with my SAO works however is the rampant deviation from canon game mechanics. I tend to depict SAO in a way that is more life-like than game-like, which I personally think helps me frame my characters in a way that they view the game as their new reality.

Anyway, I'll try to get part 2 up in perhaps a week's time. I expect this specific short story to be no more than 4 or 5 chapters. Please do review and let me know what you all think. Thanks!


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